Abstract
Crisis communication strategies must be tailored to the unique nature of social media. In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, public health agencies have widely used social media to address vaccine hesitancy and misinformation. This research utilized the social media pandemic communication model to describe the key themes disseminated through the Ontario government and the Public Health Agency of Canada's vaccine-related crisis communication on X (formerly Twitter). Between 27 January 2020 and 6 April 2021, 1271 posts related to COVID-19 vaccination were collected from three official government X accounts—two from the province of Ontario and one from Canada. Posts were analyzed and coded according to their message characteristics, main themes, and sub-themes. Both levels of government expressed similar themes of vaccine safety, benefits of vaccination, and addressed vaccine hesitancy; however, differed in terms of their messaging strategies used.
Introduction
Vaccines acted as an essential element of Canada's COVID-19 response (The Public Health Agency of Canada 2022b); however, Canada's vaccine rollout was complicated by many factors such as reduced vaccine supply, a decentralized public health system, and increased vaccine hesitancy (Kelly 2021; Marchildon 2021). The World Health Organization (WHO) declared vaccine hesitancy as one of the biggest threats to global health in 2019 (World Health Organization 2019). This threat became more significant during the COVID-19 pandemic with individuals worrying about the speed of vaccine research and development (Dror et al. 2020). Many Canadians believed the vaccines getting approved in Canada were not adequately studied and tested as they were approved within months of the pandemic (Desveaux et al. 2021).
Communication by public health organizations acts as a critical element in the response to the COVID-19 pandemic and widespread vaccine uptake (Wang et al. 2021). Vaccines can significantly mitigate and even eliminate the risk of disease and death (Orenstein and Ahmed 2017). Vaccination programs are reliant on the public's readiness to get vaccinated in addition to having a proper supply of rigorously tested vaccines (Hudson and Montelpare 2021). Public health organizations function as the first sources of accurate and credible information for citizens (Chew and Eysenbach 2010). Health crisis communication typically has two goals. First, to protect the public by highlighting and encouraging specific behavioural changes such as social distancing, increased sanitation, and vaccine uptake (Federal Emergency Management Agency 2014; Freimuth et al. 2014; Public Health Ontario 2020), and second, to maintain the organization's image and credibility (Coombs 2007).
With the increase in the public's social media use, social media has emerged as a key tool for health crisis communication (Newbold 2015). Research has shown that around 80% of online users have used social media to search for health information (Fox 2011). As the public is now more informed of public health issues, there is an increased need for information (Fox 2011; Quinn 2018). Online health crisis communication fosters the potential for a greater degree of interactivity between public health organizations and the public and allows for more efficient information dissemination (Heldman et al. 2013). However, the number of players contributing information online increases the risk of misinformation, the spreading of inaccurate information, and makes it more difficult for individuals to find accurate, reliable health information online (Heldman et al. 2013;Newbold 2015).
